If there had been enough room, the headline would be “(A very few people in) Danville (make the effort to be) United”. We can do better than this, people.
This Danville United meeting was at Holbrook St. Presbyterian Church and had ~25 people there. The object of this meeting was to elect new officers for the upcoming year, but that failed to get off the ground because the group failed to meet the 20% of members quorum as specified in the bylaws.
The problem with that is that anyone can join Danville United by simply filling out a web form, and never has to attend any of the meetings. 188 people have joined the group, but attendance has dropped from over 100 down to 25 (or less) over the past 18 months. The solution to this problem will be to change the bylaws to have to types of membership. Active members will be people who have attended three or more meeting in a calendar year, and those people will be able to vote and count to a quorum. If a member doesn’t meet that threshold, they won’t be able to vote and will be excluded from the threshold needed to hit the quorum number. That proposal will be discussed over the next month and be implemented at a meeting in August.
With all that being said, all of this could be a moot point because Danville United’s current charter runs out of time at the end of the year. That can easily be remedied by Danville City Council reauthorizing the group before the clock runs out. I’m 100% confident that will happen.
So that happened… or didn’t happen. Danville United is a great idea and can be a great organization, but only if more people get involved. One complaint that I’ve been told is “They don’t do anything.” But they’re not designed to right wrongs and make changes… it’s a group designed for in-depth discussions and expanding our thought processes.
SouthsideCentral strongly supports Danville United and I try to attend and participate in every meeting. I’d love to have your help in doing that, too.
Let’s take a look at some photos from this meeting as we close out this article…
(L-R) John Carroll, Amanda Paez & Ray Hayes
(Right to left this time) Brigid Belko, Son Wolen, Mystery Person and Brigid’s sister.
(L-R) Doris Wilson, Carrie Ashe (behind George Wilson’s head), George Wilson, Ron Johnson, Shelby Irving, Denice Thibodeau. Mildred Richardson and half of Scot McKenzie.
We’ve got all of Scot McKenzie here, as well as Mike Mondul, Avon Keen, Petrina Carter and some people I don’t know.
Philip Broadfoot and Ken Larking were also at the meeting.
We’ve got more coming up on SouthsideCentral!
how many at this meeting are city employees?
Amanda, Philip, Ken, and Shelby. Technically, you can add Mike to that list even though he is a constitutional official. Arnold was also there, but he just observed & took photos.